


The Milk of Paradise

by fitz_y



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1860s, Angst, Community: kink_bingo, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, M/M, Male Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-30
Updated: 2011-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-24 22:24:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fitz_y/pseuds/fitz_y
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>San Francisco, 1869: The gold rush is over, the opium dens are booming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Milk of Paradise

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the AU challenge, and for my [](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**kink_bingo**](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/) square "drugs/aphrodisiacs". Thanks to [](http://vjlove.livejournal.com/profile)[**vjlove**](http://vjlove.livejournal.com/) for the quick read-through a few weeks back!

_He used to wonder why he came here. How he’d ended up here, night after night._

“You’re lucky I still accept this form of payment from you.” Uther flashed him a tight-lipped grin and reached for his belt buckle. Merlin shrugged, looking down, not wanting to see the stony hardness of Uther’s gray-green eyes.

Uther gestured to the plush red carpet. “On your knees, then. You know how I like it.”

“No. Give me the hit first.” Merlin lounged back against the gold-brocaded sofa.

Uther slapped him hard across the jaw with the flat of his palm. Merlin tasted blood, but didn’t flinch.

“Remember who you’re talking to, boy.”

So Uther wanted to play games. Fine.

Uther’s strong fingers clenched in his hair, tugging hard at the roots. “Say my name, boy.”

 _The promise of gold, carried on the cool winds blowing east from the Pacific, strewn across the land, had found fertile ground in him. Him and everyone else._

“Uther Pendragon.” And then more quietly, “King Uther.”

“And whom do I rule over?” The fingers yanked his hair harder.

“All of us.”

“Who?”

“The opium eaters. Those who seek comfort. Those who can’t find their way home. We need you.”

The rough pads of his fingers were stroking Merlin’s cheekbone now, not quite gently; his voice went velvety soft. “Good boy. Now you may have it.”

He turned to the thickset man by the door. “Tell my son to bring us another pipe.”

Keeping his gaze down, Merlin sprawled on the couch and ignored the uptick of his sluggish pulse.

The heavy wooden door fell open.

 _Merlin no longer wondered why he came. Now he understood the compulsion, burning in him like honeyed fire._

“Arthur, prepare the pipe.”

This was the biggest test, not to show Uther why he returned, not to gaze up.

When Merlin dreamed, it was of this: The golden-haired son who marched through Uther’s den, obedient but haughty, who stared at his father with wounds in his eyes.

“Father.”

In his peripheral vision, Merlin saw the tightly stretched fabric of riding trousers. Arthur bowed.

Uther inserted the thick wooden tip in Merlin’s mouth, his fingers tracing over his lips. Merlin shuddered and inhaled, wondering what Arthur saw.

Arthur’s clipped footsteps receded, boots only slightly muffled by carpet, and the door closing sharply echoed through the room.

For long, stretched-out moments, Merlin smoked. On the wisps of his exhales, he drifted, meandering towards that spot of trees in the ocean, that sun-warmed corner where the sea bowed to him, the earth rejoiced under his step, the air curtsied low before him. Where two thrones waited.

“Come on, boy, you know what to do.” Clumsy fingers were prying at his jaw where it rested propped up on his hand.

Merlin leaned forward to drag more sweetness from the pipe before Uther whisked it away and gagged him. His cock was thick and heavy against Merlin’s smoke-raw throat.

But he knew how to win at this game, too. He knew how to relax his throat, burrow back against the pillow, and watch his mind amble away.

Standing over the chaise, the king was holding his head, surging forward with purpose, grunting as his warm cock tap tap tapped at the back of Merlin’s throat. Merlin closed his eyes.

Above him, the king was silent as his fingers scratched marks into Merlin’s skin and he plowed into his mouth again and again.

With a snarl, he spilled bitter seed down his throat, and Merlin released Uther.

Merlin slumped back, and severed his last tether to earth—drifting on the air currents with the birds, losing himself in the damp mist inside of a cloud, writing Arthur’s and his name in the sky, watching how those words glowed like an impossible promise, like a memory kept by a crumbling stone, like an idea carved on the inside of an unopened door.

The world—a top—spun and Merlin fixed it at its center, clenching Arthur’s broad hand in his, calling out the birth names of the stars together.

 _He would never find gold. Yet he had found something better._  


***

  
“Go on, Merlin, get lost. You’ve overstayed your welcome,” a deep voice scratched at his ear.

Merlin floated awake, rubbing dreams out of his eyes.

Arthur’s hand was warm pressure on his shoulder. He lifted a finger to scrape at a smear, a dried crust, by Merlin’s lips. He cleared his throat and stood up, back straight, footsteps imperious as he walked away.


End file.
